By Ray Bennett
The only word for Michael Conrad, the American actor born on this day 100 years ago, who played veteran cop Sgt. Phil Esterhaus in the long-running U.S. crime series ‘Hill Street Blues’ in the early Eighties, was formidable.
It wasn’t just that he stood a robust six-feet-four but his countenance stirred apprehension. He told me, ‘I can put a look on my face that people back away from.’ Esterhaus was the loquacious officer who led the roll call at the start of each episode of the show and told his men, ‘Let’s be careful out there.’
He had a long list of film and television credits often playing heavies but in ‘Hill Street Blues, playing’ a bear of a man, he was articulate with a compassionate regard for his squad and catnip for women. Life imitated art while when he and I had lunch in Alice’s Restaurant at the Malibu Pier early in the show’s run.
A very attractive woman stopped at our table, lowered her voice and said, ‘Excuse me, but I just have to say that I love you’ and walked away. Conrad said, ‘It’s amazing how many women find me so attractive in my middle years.’ Of course, I reminded him, Esterhaus was portrayed as something of a sexual dynamo. ‘True,’ he said. ‘But I don’t take it too seriously. It’s only make believe, you know.’ He paused and smiled, ‘Even though I’m pretty good in the real world too. I’ve had considerable experience in this area. You’re talking to a man who is very knowledgeable about women and marriage. I’ve had many, many different and varied experiences. I still don’t know it all but I do know an awful lot.’
Conrad confessed that he was a very emotional man. ‘I live my life very carefully, husbanding my emotions because in life you can’t let them go and acting is the area that I have to release them,’ he said. ‘I also I have a very violent nature, a monumental temper but it doesn’t come out very often.’
James B. Sikking, who played combat-ready SWAT commander Howard Hunter and had known Conrad for years, told me he had never seen him lose his temper. ‘’Oh, sure, I’ve seen him angry but only when a scene or something isn’t going right,’ he said. ‘He has horrendous words to deliver and that can be frustrating and cause anger. But Michael is really the quintessential professional actor.’
He wasn’t kidding. Every episode began with Esterhaus delivering an often convoluted and multisyllabic monologue. So diligent was he in mastering those lines that he retained them. At lunch, he showed me. ‘Tinia pedis or dermatophytosis, referred to in the vernacular as athlete’s foot, is a tough and resilient foe capable of waging relentless guerilla warfare,’ he declaimed. ‘Therefore, everybody is expected to do his part in the war effort. Specifically, frequent changes of socks and the daily application of detergent substances to the bipedal surfaces. Let’s show a little podiatric diligence and lick this thing, huh, fellas?’
The actor appeared on several TV western series and he said he was pleased with the non-western pictures he’d made including ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They’ with Jane Fonda, ’The Longest Yard’ with Burt Reynolds and his favourite, the allegorical war film ‘Castle Keep’ with Burt Lancaster and Peter Falk. It did not do very well and Conrad said, ‘It was ahead of its time. We captured a feeling of soldiers in timeless war, timeless foolishness, timeless misery. It was a fabulous picture.’
He had never tried to chart his career, he said, ‘I think it’s fooliish. I think there’s a tapestry, a strange design that all of us have and I think you’ve got to let it take you where it takes you.’ His greatest wish was to make a western: ‘I love the West. I’d rather do a western than eat. There’s always a fresh way to do something. I want to act out the love of the land, the love of being on horseback smoking a cigarette out by yourself at night, humming a little song. Little snatches of grandeur, of peace. Little things.’
It wasn’t to be. He went on to international fame with two Emmy Awards for outstanding supporting actor. But when I spoke to him on the phone from Toronto in the fall of 1983 he hinted that he was having health problems and he died of urethral cancer that November.